Just few centimeters available. Do I even have a chance?

[segdy]

I am struggling with my water meter which is in a box under the ground on the street. The gap to the cement cover is just a few centimeters.

I have played around a bit with duct tape (which is super hard because the cover is heavy) and rotating the lense by a bit but I just don't get a good image.

Now even if I would be able to bring the counter on the camera, I realize that the cover is not completely fixed and just stepping on it moves it by a bit and with it, the image.

Do I even have a chance with this setup?

[nwalk7800]

You can keep turning the lens counter clockwise to get a closer focus distance. From my experience the closest they can focus is about 4cm.

There are also wide angle OV2640's available, but I don't know if that would be any better.

You could also gain about a cm if you remove the serial adapter and wire up 5v directly to the pins.